There are two ways to think about this: what’s the nerdiest thing you can think of OR what’s the most in-jokey vanity project you can think of? Either way, the answer is MLA Members Cook! This is a cookbook supposedly created by collecting recipes from members of the MLA; yes that MLA, as in the formatting and citation style your English teachers and professors made you use. I said ‘supposedly’ created because based on what this supposed book is presented as, a cookbook by members […]
My Chemical Renaissance
I am an English teacher and, as such, I regularly teach Shakespeare to high schoolers. This is nearly always met with varying degrees of trepidation; even the ones who like literature and who have a good grasp of the English language find his works somewhat daunting and often boring by default. And I get it, I do, but it’s such a shame. Once you get the hang of it and manage to pierce through the – admittedly often dense – language, Shakespeare was an absolute […]
Pain could be measured, whereas love often couldn’t even be located.
This book is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. I previously reviewed Chevalier’s New Boy from the series. It was a FANTASTIC take on Othello. A year or so ago, I read Atwood’s spin on the Tempest , Hag-Seed, but didn’t really care for it. Dunbar is St. Aubyn’s retelling of King Lear and I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it. My general reaction to most of it was… “What just happened?!” St. Aubyn focuses pretty much exclusively on the dysfunctional family theme here. Henry Dunbar is an 80-year-old billionaire business mogul who hasn’t exactly […]
There was no choice, really. Is there ever between the darkness and the light? You walk toward the smile rather than the frown.
This book is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. I read Margaret Atwood’s book in the series, Hag-Seed, a year or so ago but wasn’t crazy about her play within a play retelling of the Tempest. I’m reading Edward St. Aubyn’s contribution to the series now, Dunbar, and not quite sure yet how I feel about his version of Lear. This re-imagined Othello set on the playground of my youth, however, is fantastic. I was immediately drawn to the echoes of that time: monkey bars, playing jacks, jump rope rhymes and […]